[Music] in 12 short years Alexander of Macedon forged a reputation for invincibility and ensured that his name would live on as one of the great military Geniuses of all time from Greece to India his Brilliance on the battlefield and in Siege Warfare crushed all armies and fortresses that stood in his way his body covered with the scars earned in combat stood as testimony to his personal courage and willingness to lead from the front the scale of Alexander's achievement would Inspire generations of generals to come he smashed the vast Persian Empire with breathtaking speed he was ruthless pragmatic heroic and a superb organizer these talents he used to cut a bloody passage across the known world toppling ancient dynasties creating new cities and acquiring incredible wealth today the place of the Empire he built has been taken by a swath of 21st century Nations many of them no strangers to waren Invasion as a general as a soldier and as an inspirational leader of men he had no equal and yet his Brilliance was tarnished by darker qualities he was subject to drunken rages and murderous paranoia he believed increasingly that he was a God in lands he conquered he is still remembered as Alexander the accursed but to those who consider his deeds from AAR he remains Alexander the [Music] Great [Music] [Music] Alexander was born the son of King Philip II of Macedon in 356 [Music] BC Macedonia was an isolated Backwater situated to the north of Mount Olympus and although they worshiped the same Gods as other Greeks and took part in the Olympic Games macedonians had their own dialect and Customs the fact that they were still ruled by a despotic king in an age that saw democracy flourish in Greece marked them out as different many Greeks to the South did not even regard them as Greeks but whatever his neighbors misgivings Philip succeeded in putting Macedonia firmly on the map as a regional Powerhouse Philip of Macedon is not often given enough credit for what he achieved with Macedonia in that when he came to the throne in 358 it was disunited it was under attack externally and he forged Macedonia into the strongest state in Greece he brought together an army which he completely remodeled he gave grants of land to individuals to make them able to serve in the Army he redesigned their Weaponry redesigned their tactics and then he led that Army to consolid the Macedonian State against its enemies both in the North in Alyria and in the South Alexander was born into this powerful ruling family where he received an upbringing which stretched both his mind and his body good-looking bright and robust he excelled intellectually and physically he was an active Sportsman an excellent writer and like most Macedonian noblemen a devotee of the hunt one of the first stories told about Alexander is how aged 12 or 13 he won the horse that was to carry him into battle it tells us much about his character a famous horse breeder from thessaly offered to sell King Phillip a magnificent stallion but whenever one of Philip's Grooms approached it the horse reared up and refused to let anyone Mount Alex Ander was critical of their efforts to teach him respect for his Elders Philip challenged him to do better Alexander approached the horse took the Bridle and turned it to face the Sun what he had noticed was something that no one else had spotted the horse was shying at the sight of its own shadow he talked calmly and soothingly to the horse stroking it all the while when he judged the moment was right he sprang onto its back Philip and his retinue looked on at first apprehensive ly but then with growing admiration as Alexander caner then galloped across the plane wheeling and riding back in full control Philip wept for Joy when Alexander dismounted and embraced him with the words son you must find a kingdom big enough for your Ambitions Macedonia is too small for you I think the thing really to take away from the story is that it it illustrates that Alexander saw something that no one else had scene that he mastered the horse and his and therefore his environment through observation and will Alexander named the Horus buus which means Ox head and he carried Alexander Faithfully through all his campaigns in Europe and Asia and as far as India where buis died in battle in 326 BC tradition maintains that Alexander's horse be sefler uh was broken when when the horse was 12 years old and it said that the horse went on to campaign with Alexander for a further 16 years now if we look at something like the Arab breed of horse we can see that the horse horses live you know well into their 20s or can do so it's perfectly feasible that that Alexander's horse would have lived to a grand old age of 28 but whether he'd still be carrying him on his back you know I don't know I don't see why not I guess but uh he'd be a very very old horse at 13 Alexander entered the school of Royal Pages studying with other young Macedonian Aristocrats at mza a beautiful quiet spot remote from the distractions of the Court their tutor was the renowned philosopher Aristotle who inspired deep admiration and respect in the young Alexander and a Devotion to philosophy coupled with a passion for knowledge that was to last his whole life however it was his father who was Alexander's most important tutor giving him the opportunity to experience State business and taking him on campaign in 340 BC while campaigning in Greece he left his son a mere 14 years old as Regent this was the moment the m a powerful thian tribe chose to revolt the young Regent mobilized his forces took the enemy capital and established a military Colony naturally enough he named It alexandropoulos 2 years later Alexander commanded the Cavalry at the Battle of chironia a decisive Victory against Athens and thieves that won his father preeminence in Greece by now Philip possessed the most powerful and modern Army in the region and had transformed Macedon Philip uh created a magnificent Army in Macedonia and he used that Army to establish Macedonia as the dominant power in not only Greece but the Balkans he also had turned Macedonia from a fairly poor backwards almost non-greek State into a wealthy and flourishing Society together Father and Son now prepared for a campaign to liberate the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Persian rule but in 336 BC at the peak of his power Philip was assassinated by the captain of his bodyguard panus a jilted lover the throne was Alexander's but it brought problems territories that Philip had subjugated saw an opportunity to throw off the Macedonian yoke within days Alexander faced revolts in both Greece and the Balkans fortunately he had at his disposal the Army created by his father and he knew how to use [Music] it Greek city states probably varied considerably in their view of Alexander some of the Greek city states like Athens and Sparta which had once been very powerful themselves were particularly worried about Alexander's power the city states which were closer to Macedon probably saw great opportunities so I think Alexander like Philip before him meant different things to different Greek city states there was that political Legacy but above all perhaps what Philip bequeathed to Alexander was this extraordinary Army which had been completely transformed by Phillip and it was now by far the most effective fighting force in the ancient world Alexander soon put this Army to use first marching South to overw his reluctant Greek allies then campaigning in the Balkans against the yans chali and gai finally when false rumors of Alexander's death encouraged thieves to revolt he made another lightning descent on the south here Alexander demonst ated his ruthlessness thieves was destroyed and 20,000 thians were sold into slavery within a year and with his Greek allies anxiously reaffirming their loyalty Alexander was ready to turn East the relationship of the Greek world to Persia before Alexander's Reign was in general one of resentment and hostility the Persians had after all tried to conquer Greece in the early fifth century and they had come quite close to success the Persians also retained control over Greek communities living in Asia Minor as well as the Greek communities on the island of Cyprus it's clear from Alexander's character that from an early age he he was somebody aspired to to great things the only logical place for a great king to show his greatness was by moving East also his his father's Legacy was was incomplete U Philip had laid quite quite elaborate plans to invade the Persian Empire which Alexander was fully involved in uh and there's little doubt that he would have wanted to to validate his new kingship by demonstrating that he was a a worthy successor of his father I think that probably at the outset the aim was still what had been Philip's aim to conquer Asia to take over the land to use that again to sort of build into the Macedonian Empire the idea of allout conquest of taking over the Persian Empire becoming king of that I think came quite a lot later for over 150 years the Persian Empire had been the greatest power in the near East at its height it stretched from Central Greece to the Valley of the indis [Music] despite a succession of poor rulers revolts and Civil Wars it was still a powerful State incredibly Rich a strong Naval power and capable of Fielding formidable [Music] armies Persian provinces known as Sates possessed their own Armed Forces which were expected to deal with everyday threats however the Empire's best troops were the Elite forces directly under the great king and faced with an extraordinary military threat this Force could be supplemented by levies from the rest of the Empire the strengths and the weaknesses of the Persian Empire are actually the same thing and that is its great size in that it was enormously wealthy compared to the other civilizations around it enormous Manpower clearly the Persian king could call on contingents from across his Empire and in that sense the Persians could put together an army which was more than the equal of anything the Greeks could bring against them on the other hand that size similarly made it very unwieldy in that it was very difficult to bring together a large army at short notice it was difficult to move around within the Empire because the distances are so great this was the army that Alexander had to defeat if his dreams of empire were to be realized Alexander crossed the helispot between Europe and Asia in the spring of 334 BC Heading an army of 48,000 infantry and 6,000 Cavalry in a fleet of transports and 120 warships as the prow ground into the shallows Alexander leaped overboard and hurled his spear into the sand shouting I accept Asia from the gods won by my spear this was a conscious echo of the action of the Greek hero protalus who was the first Soldier ashore when the Greeks had invaded Troy over 900 years before the beach where the Greek ships had actually landed was close by treat yourself to the best gift in history this holiday season enjoy unlimited access to award-winning podcasts and thousands of hours of original history documentaries released weekly exclusively on History hit there are topics for all history lovers from Pompei to D-Day sign up via the link in the description for an exclusive discount don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to explore the past like never before with history hit by identifying himself with his glorious episode in Greek's epic past Alexander was making clear to the world and future historians how he and his invasion were to be viewed Alexander visited the site of Troy partly out of family reasons because his mother came from a dynasty which claimed descent from Achilles one of the great Greek Heroes at Troy but Alexander when he visited Troy he would have done so in the full blaze of publicity it was an act of image management as well meant for a larger audience and it's likely that what Alexander was trying to Signal among other things was his respect for Greek culture the Greek past and this was a signal to Greek people people that Alexander had Greek tastes he was well known and this must have been because he let it be known that he slept with a copy of Homer's epic The Iliad under his pillow and this too I think was part of Alexander's image management it was vitally important at this stage of the campaign to try and keep the Greeks on side the Persian satraps of Anatolia the great King's Regional governors elected to challenge Al Ander to battle in the Asian Gates behind the river granicus placing their calvalry in front with the Infantry behind the Persian plan was simple charge Alexander and the macedonians as they climbed the river granus as Banks and hop that a downhill assault against a disorganized enemy would win the battle What followed was an astonishingly brief and one-sided Affair the battle started when a squadron of elite companion Cavalry followed by high high paci pists and Lancers attacked the center left of the Persian line at the crucial moment Alexander charged with his Royal Squadron enabling the rest of the Macedonian army to get to grips with the Enemy Persian Cavalry could not face the dense formed fanks and even worse they were outflanked by the companion Cavalry they fled the Battleground the Persian infantry mostly Greek hoplight mercenaries who fought with shields inter locked didn't have the luxury of fleeing and were cut to Pieces perhaps 1,000 Persian Cavalry lost their lives in the battle but as many as 20,000 infantry were killed after the battle was already lost Victory on the granicus gave Alexandra Bridge head into Asia Minor but this defeat barely scratched the Persian Empire the real sources of Persian power The Fabulous wealth the naval resources of Phoenicia the Royal Army and the great king himself Darius III all lay many hundreds of miles to the east Alexander continued East too some cities surrendered others such as militus and halic carnosus fell to vigorously press seizes his Advance was inexorable and his reputation went before him in many of these cities Alexander was made to feel quite welcome although we know that in some of these cities too there were misgivings about this eruption of a new monarch onto the political scene and we have a story of how Alexander sought to pay for a new Temple at a big Greek city called Ephesus on condition that he could put his name on the front of the building and the citizens of Ephesus said no we'd rather not have the money if it means having your name on our buildings I think they were very proud and very independent-minded and they were wary therefore of this new ruler in their [Music] midst the Persian king Darius III had been a notable Warrior but faced with the Macedonian Invasion his performance was lethargic and inept after 10 months of inactivity Darius ordered a major Maritime counter offensive but the great king and his Army stayed in the heartlands of the Empire the Persian navy captured kios and most of Lesbos however Alexander's rapid Advance forced Darius to face the unpleasant truth that the maritime strategy while being a great nuisance to his enemy had not forced him to Halt it took dasas King of Persia rather a long time to come and confront Alexander so why the delay two main factors one is the sheer fact of Persian size the size of the Persian Empire it took a long time to mobilize fully a Persian Royal Army the second reason for dasas delay is in terms of Persian Royal Prestige Persian kings were the greatest individual in the world it was beneath their dignity to go out and confront every Tom Dick or Harry who might choose to attack a bit of their realm but they were to regret their lethargy by August 333 BC Alexander was in cissa within a couple of hundred miles of The Phoenician cities of the Lan the source of Persian Naval power meanwhile Darius had assembled a formidable army near Babylon including a new Persian Corps the kardasis who were trained as heavy infantry predictably the strongest arm remained Persia's numerous and excellent Cavalry claims by Alexander's biographer Tommy that the Persian army was 600,000 strong are unbelievable but even excluding infantry levies it heavily outnumbered the macedonians this was the highest quality Force Persia was ever to field Against The Invader challenging Alexander with the royal Persian army was always a high-risk strategy uh for dasas the armies of the satraps across the Empire they could be lost and that wouldn't damage the fundamental strength for the Empire losing the Royal Army would put the entire Empire at r risk but of course uh if Alexander keeps coming you do have to keep thinking about fighting a battle at some stage practicality says you have to fight him but perhaps more important than practicality a king who keeps denying battle is going to lose the support of his Nobles in cissa Alexander felt desperately ill and was only able to resume active campaigning in October pressing on into Syria he discovered much to his surprise that the Persian army had moved behind him now Alexander would get the battle he craved but the Persians would select the battlefield the Persians elected to fight south of isus between the ammonis mountains and the Gulf of isus here the coastal plane was less than 2 mi wide and the Persian Left Flank rested on the mountain [Music] side their battle line followed the panaris river diagonally across the plane then 2 mi from the sea kinked perpendicular to the coast onto the flank of the mountains which push their left wing ahead of their right the vast bulk of Persia's Cavalry was massed by the Sea next were the kardasis then the Greek hoplight mercenaries Darius with his Royal Horse and foot guard was positioned just prior to the Kink on the left wing after the Kink were kardasis with Cavalry support archers covered the front of the battle line and the next to useless light infantry lay behind to their left in the mountains Persian light infantry held a detached loose Crescent formation hooking southwards from the Persian line the rocky banks of the river provided a formidable barrier even where they became less pronounced near the sea the Infantry in the center enhanced these natural defenses by building stockades furthest from the enemy but closest to the Sea it was easy to cross the river but here the Persians expected their Cavalry would be the ones moving forward it was to his Cavalry that Darius looked to win the battle by crushing the enemy wing and turning on the rear and flank of the fanks [Music] Alexander's Macedonian infantry took hours to form a line 8 men deep well rehearsed drills ensuring no gaps were left for roving Persian Cavalry to exploit Alexander intended to start the battle on his right away from the coast forcing the enemy from the river with successive infantry assaults Rippling leftwards towards the coast seeing where the enemy Cavalry were masked he ordered his thesan Cavalry to reinforce his left wing he also worried about the Persian troops in the loose Crescent and detached a mixed force of 300 Cavalry and infantry to guard against their threat Alexander had particular skills which were I think spying out the terrain making sure that he adopted the most successful tactics for the particular environment in which the battle was going to be fought and also in terms of tactical Innovation because we see different tactics suited to each of the three major battles that he fights and he is extremely good at um instituting tactics which will reveal his enemy's weaknesses dasas was looking at a king who was also a seasoned commanderin-chief of a very finely honed military machine which he had already led to resounding victory at the granicus and much earlier before he'd even crossed into the Persian Empire dasas himself had a reputation for personal physical courage but he would not have had the same kind of military experience probably as Alexander by the afternoon the macedonians were formed up in front of the enemy's Left Flank but they were still a half a mile away from the Persian right suddenly the Macedonian highp Pas pists led by Alexander were hurling across the river straight at the kink in the Persian line the caes faced a sickening realization that despite the Steep river banks it was here that the enemy was going to make its main effort as the elite Macedonian troops crashed deep into the Persian line the companion Cavalry crossed the riverbed and engaged the Persian left which simultaneously attacked by an outflanked mixed force of Lancers light Cavalry infantry and archers began to collapse the Persians however had not lost yet for closer to the Sea the battle was going almost a plan there the sheer weight of numbers forced Alexander's forces back with the thesans fighting a corageous delaying action the Macedonian line bent back but did not break meanwhile in the center the fallinks formations facing the card Dees crossed the river maintaining a coherent formation but those opposed by hotlights were engaged in a bloody fight the enemy succeeded in getting into the gaps making it hard for them to wield their sesa the whole battle was in the balance at this point Alexander delivered his master stroke putting himself at the head of the royal Cavalry guard he charred straight at Darius who after a brief fight fled the [Music] battlefield the Persian army already crumbling collapsed as the news spread less than an hour had passed since Alexander's initial assault desperate to escape the battlefield the Persians found their sheer numbers a huge liability thousands of their their soldiers were killed in the Macedonian Pursuit the writer Aran speaks of a ravine so full of corpses that the pursuers were able to use the bodies as a bridge Macedonian losses were reported to be only a few 100 there's little doubt that Alexander's intervention his personal intervention in battles and in sieges and on campaigns had an astonishingly positive effect on his men but but to belb the obvious if he had been killed then he could not have commanded anymore personal involvement brought its risks Alexander was frequently wounded Alexander acts like an old style hero in his battles and ran the consequent risks it's certainly the case that the point at which Alexander put himself at the head of say a picked body of infantry or a picked body of Cavalry and charged he was no longer capable of controlling the whole Army but it's a bit of a myth that any general was capable of controlling a whole Army wherever they were in that sense a general is capable of controlling bits of an army for some of the time and Alexander's Knack was to pick the right bit and the right time to have decisive impact it's not clear that the Persian king was expected to lead from the front in the Macedonian Royal tradition earlier Persian kings are known sometimes actually to have sat as spectators at um battles being fought out in their name and that's important for understanding why dasas withdrew from the battlefield at isus um rather than fought to the death not necessarily cadis but because tradition required that the Persian king be withdrawn from the battlefield if it looked as if his life would be in danger immediately after the battle Alexander sees darius's baggage train and the enormous sum of 3,000 talents solved all his financial problems the results of the battle of isus were unequivocal Persia was never able to field so many good Greek infantry again and His stunning Victory also allowed Alexander's forces to overrun The Phoenician Coastline the region that for over a century had provided Persia with a very powerful navy after isus Persia ceased to be a naval power military victory was the basis of Alexander's Conquest but there were very important additional contributions made by other means Alexander made full use of local talent wherever he could he tried to get the locals onto his side as long as they were subordinate to him as long as they recognized him as the Victor then he was prepared to use them he uses locals in Asia Minor he uses Egyptians in Egypt he gets these people onto his side and this is of fundamental importance in enabling him to hang on to to control to exploit the territories which he has conquered Ty was the only Phoenician City to refuse to submit to Alexander the 50,000 tyrians believed their City built on an island with 150 ft High walls was impregnable but they were wrong for Alexander the successful taking of TI was essential if he was to knock out Ty and the other Phoenician city states in this part of the ancient world which provided the Persian Empire with its Naval bases so before he could go further east and chase after dasas he had to have neutralized Persian sea power the resistance by the people of Ty which was was a strong heavily fortified city was much fiercer than Alexander probably anticipated what's also interesting about Ty is that really it's the only major Siege which Alexander has to carry out in his uh expedition to Asia and it's the time when we see perhaps most clearly just what his Siege train was capable of and you have these major military um engineering works like the great mole that um he builds and then all these uh Siege Towers which he's constructing and for this kind of Siege technology he would have been very reliant on Greek Engineers it's a good example of his Reliance on Greeks in order to deploy his spectacular Siege engines Alexander decided to build a mole linking the city to the mainland this was not only a gigantic engineering project the finished mole was nearly 1,000 yards long and 250 ydd wide but required constant effort to hold off ingenious Tyrion attacks finally in July Alexander was able to break into the city attacking from the mole and launching amphibious assaults Ty paid a heavy price for their Defiance thousands of its people were killed when the city fell 30,000 were sold into slavery and 2,000 were crucified Alexander is said to have had a conversation with his second in command palmeno about the advisability of accepting a peace deal with dasas of Persia a peace deal which would have the Persians recognizing Alexander's conquest of the land up to the Euphrates seeding that territory for him in return for continued Persian control of the areas East Alexander rejected this advice I think a lot of the macedonians were quite surprised when Alexander didn't take this offer because it would have been a sign that he'd won he'd achieved what he'd set out to he would have conquered um the whole of the land um whole of Asia Minor and Beyond which dasas was offering him and I think that illustrates more than anything else the diver between the macedonians particularly those who' served under Phillip and their idea about the aims of the campaign and Alexander and his idea about what he was going to achieve and so then in that sense talking about whether it made political and Military sense to carry on the campaign clearly it did if you were Alexander if Alexander had come to a compromise and accepted the Euphrates as a barrier yes it might have survived D for his lifetime but if there had been weakness in Macedon after his death then the Persians would have been back although he had refused the Persian offer of peace Alexander chose to defer a further confrontation with Darius and continued on down the coast of Palestine to Gaza which fell after a stiff resistance and pelusium which surrendered without a fight from there he sailed up the Nile to the Egyptian capital of Memphis at the head of the Delta passing the Pyramids of Giza on his journey in Memphis he received a rapturous welcome liberating Egypt from 200 years of Persian rule he immediately set about laying the foundations for helenic cultural influence in Egypt that would last for three centuries this included the construction of Alexandria one of a score of cities to bear his name and the longest lived Alexander would have had to take out Egypt I think before heading further eastwards just as he had already felt he had to take out the Naval bases of the Persians in what's now Lebanon and Syria and so Egypt was one of the wealthiest parts of the Persian Empire it was a famously Rich part of the ancient world the Romans thought it was one of their riches provinces um the fertility of the Nile Valley was absolutely Legend in ancient times so Alexander will have wanted to secure Egypt both for strategic and probably also for economic reasons Alexander must have been reminded of his mother's claim that he was really the son of Zeus when he allowed himself to be crowned pharaoh of Egypt in a ceremony that linked him with the Supreme deity Ammon he journeyed into the desert to visit the side of the Sacred Oracle of Ammon situated at the Oasis of and there he was greeted by the priest as Son of God after a night of prayer the Oracle confirmed him in his belief that he was divine it's not certain that Alexander was crowned Pharaoh so the place that Egypt played in any ideas which Alexander might have started to be getting about his divinity is unclear what's a bit more certain is that Alexander went to visit a famous Oracle in the western desert of Egypt at a place called sewa and he in the ancient tradition is said to have come away from this Oracle believing that he was in some sense the son of the god of the Oracle who was a kind of mixture of the Greek God Zeus and the Egyptian god Ammon so at this point the idea that Alexander was the son of a god seems to have got underway Alexander left Egypt in 331 BC and marched eastwards eager to complete his unfinished business with the Persian king Darius Darius had assembled 40,000 Horsemen mostly armed with bows javelins and scimitars but some equipped with armor and lances infantry numbers were more than twice that but where his army was disastrously weak was in heavy infantry with only 6,000 Greek mercenary hotlights and 1,000 Royal Guardsmen however Darius had a secret weapon up his sleeve 200 Scythe chariots and once again the macedonians were heavily [Music] outnumbered Darius chose to fight at guag on the 1st of October 331 BC he prepared the battlefield for his chariots and the flat open terrain also favored his Cavalry but the battle was to be yet another dramatic Persian defeat Alexander created a gap between the Persians right and Center into which he led the hippasus and the companion Cavalry in a furious charge this combination of elite infantry and heavy Cavalry shattered the Persian Center once more Alexander cut his way across the battlefield towards Darius and once again Darius fled meanwhile the Macedonian left heavily outnumbered and outflanked formed a defensive box and pushed back the Persians with a countercharge launched by the excellent thean Cavalry once again the news that Darius had fled converted defeat into route Alexander pursued his beaten enemy for 75 miles to Arbella but Darius escaped absolutely Central to the way Alexander approached battle was the way he was able to Marshall and organize his army so that he hit the enemy when and where and in the structure which he wanted that sort of approach seems to typify Alexander the the ability to throw strength against his the perceived position of weakness while actually holding back the weakest bit of his line and thereby delaying problems in the weakest area of his line to enable him to win the battle elsewhere perhaps as many as 40,000 Persian men died at guaga but but more than the Persian army was destroyed for this battle was the death nail of the ancient Persian State following isus Alexander had written to Darius if you dispute the kingship of Asia with me stand and fight now with the great king and armless fugitive Alexander was officially proclaimed King of Asia Alexander decided to consolidate his victory rather than pursue Darius and collected a fortune some of which he immediately distributed to his resting soldiers in Susa he netted over 40,000 talents of gold and silver as well as 9,000 talents of gold coins before marching onto prolis the spiritual heart of the Persian Empire the city opened its gates to the new ruler of the Persian Empire here was more treasure which represented 300 times the annual income of the Athenian Empire after wintering in pepolis Alexander was ready to finally dispose of Darius as he was preparing to leave the city burned to the ground the cause and chorus of the fire remain a mystery the events at pepis were debated even in Antiquity in one version of events Alexander deliberately Set Fire to the Palace of the Persian kings as a deliberate symbol that the Greeks had Avenged the sacrilege of the Persians of old when they'd invaded Greece in 480 BC in an alternative more scarless Version Alexander has had too much to drink after a party and he's egged on by an Athenian woman to avenge Persian insults on her ancestral City archaeology has in fact fact shown that the first version is probably correct because the part of the palace which was in fact a complex of palaces which Alexander seems to have burnt down was the part which was built by the specific Persian King Xerxes I first who had invaded Greece in 480 BC so if that is correct and it probably is what it shows is that Alexander even at this stage is still taking very very seriously the need to keep Greek public opinion sweet leaving the smoking ruins of prepis behind him Alexander set out after [Music] Darius in only 11 days he covered 400 mil taking the so-called impregnable Caspian Gates Pass on his way when Alexander sets off in Pursuit Of The Fugitive Persian king dasas he is prepared to ride his Cavalry horses into the ground um and eventually catches up with with dasas with only a handful of his retinue left in the saddle but Alexander was denied his prize bessus the satrap of bactria murdered Darius and left the corpse for the pursuers one of Alexander's original aims when he set out from Macedonia was to bring Greek civilization and culture to the world in Persia he was faced with a totally alien culture with its own Tangled hierarchies deep-seated traditions and religious practices so how did he work with this new Persian culture in 331 BC Alexander for the first time starts appointing high ranking Persians to key posts in his Asian Empire as satraps or governors of the provinces of his Asian Empire and what this Heralds in fact is the beginning of a long and sustained attempt by Alexander to adopt some of the culture of in particular the Persians whom he was in the act of conquering almost certainly he is doing this for the same reason as other canny conquerors have behaved in similar ways in other periods he realized that he could not hope to hold down his conquests by force alone his army was really quite a small one compared to the potential Manpower pool of Asia what he had to do was to move his conquests onto a consensual basis and what that meant was having a Reconciliation of some kind with the key groups in the old Persian Empire who were the Persian Elites so what Alex and is doing from 331 onwards is enacting various policies to try and make the new regime attractive to these people in the months that followed military priorities changed Alexander intended to take full control of the entire Persian Empire and he knew that this meant pacification operations rather than pitched battles such operations were not new to him he'd fought such campaigns in the Balkans one of the things that made Alexander such an extraordinary Commander was his Mastery of War at the the low intensity level of conflict right from the start of his campaigning in Asia uh he engaged in pacification campaigns indeed the the patent tended to be spring and summer for big campaigns against big armies aw in Winter uh you you you you stripped the The Heavy Armor down you you you you formed yourselves into smaller groups and you chased the the local tribes who were being a little bit awkward into the hills Alexander substantially reorganized the Army the Cavalry except the companions were reorganized into smaller multiracial units of 75 to 100 Troopers the fenites were reorganized into formations of 1,000 under the command of chilar the Infantry were retrained and re-equipped to enable them to conduct mobile operations however this did not mean old formations and skills were forgotten indeed the Macedonian field Army could still be rapidly assembled to fight pitched battles the pacification of the vast provinces of sudiana and baa was a war of fast-moving raids and punitive Expeditions punctuated by building fortified cities and spectacular seizures when the enemy made a stand it was normally in some supposedly impregnable Fortress only for Alexander to demonstrate that there was no such Fortress for instance early in 327 BC he took the rock of sdana when 300 of his troops climbed a 200t sheer cliff in the dark I don't think Alexander saw any military engagement as anything El would been an opportunity to build his own heroic stature and so among the set pieces that we have in our sources on Alexander there are all kinds of engagements um there's the case when he gets up to sogdiana right on the sort of Northeastern reaches of the Persian Empire where he takes on the capture of the rock of aorus which is which was popularly supposed to be impregnable it was said that nobody had ever managed to conquer it and Alexander took that as a personal Challenge and determined that he would do that not that fighting in Sagan was easy one Macedonian battle group of over 2,000 men was destroyed by spines the most capable of Alexander's soanian opponents however swiftly administered and effective punishment jux deposed with very favorable terms of surrender worked fed up with the war the Sans sent him span's severed head Alexander's last great campaign was his invasion of India the wealthy Valley of the indis constituted the most easterly extension of the Persian Empire reason enough for Alexander to invade in the early summer of 327 BC the Macedonian army with nearly 30,000 infantry and 6,300 Cavalry headed east Alexander's invasion of India was potentially quite a a quite a a sensible move the Valley of the Indus was wealthy it being one of the Persia's most wealthy provinces and conquering it could be fairly lucrative however given that Alexander's Empire was not centered on Persia but was centered on Macedonia which is much further away given that his army was already at the end of a very long campaign and going increasingly unhappy about having to stay on campaign uh the invasion of India was unwise certainly Alexander's men didn't want to go to India they'd heard about snakes they'd heard about elephants they'd heard about the monsoon and they thought that India was not somewhere that it was necessary for the Macedonian army to go three reasons why Alexander crossed the Indus and invaded India firstly that part of India had once belonged to the Persian Empire so Alexander was reclaiming in a sense what he now saw himself as air to secondly we know that Alexander had sent spies explorers into India who had come back and told him that India was full of gold and Alexander's conquests were always prefaced by this kind of checking out of the resources to see if it was actually land worth Conquering the third reason was probably because Alexander believed that he was on the verge of Conquering the known world and to understand how he could have thought that you have to realize that ancient Greek geography which is what Aristotle would have taught Alexander believed that there was a great land mass surrounded by ocean and what Alexander seems to have believed is that when he crossed the Indus the ocean that surrounded the Eastern side of the known world was only a few days March away so he had this wonderful Prospect opening up of being able to call himself World Conqueror and that almost certainly was one of the three big motives in May 326 BC porus a powerful Indian Raja blocked his passage at the river hydaspes which was particularly difficult to cross as it was in full flood Alexander moved detachments up and down the river making as if to cross and fake several Noisy Night Crossings finally during a horrible night of heavy rain and thunder he crossed 16 Mi [Music] Upstream porus sent his son with 2,000 Cavalry to investigate the crossing but Alexander defeated them and pores' son died in the skirmish with Alexander now across the river in force porus deployed for battle moving his army diagonally as he approached Alexander concentrated against the Indian left here horse archers rapidly defeated the Indian chariots and Alexander leading 1,000 companion Cavalry made to attack from the flank the Indian Cavalry turning 90° moved forward leaving a gap the Cavalry on the Macedonian left the other side of the battlefield charged across the Indian line slamming into this Gap just as Alexander charged from the other side shattering the enemy Cavalry Wing simultaneously the hyp pasus and fanks closed with the Infantry on the IND Ian left here the elephants trampled hundreds of Macedonian infantry but Alexander had anticipated this threat ordering his archers and Javelin men to concentrate on the lead elephants while the falangists picked off the mahoods who controlled them at this moment Indian Cavalry from the other Wing arrived but out fought by Alexander's Cavalry they were forced back into their infantry the elephants without mahoods and enraged by Mass Onan missiles trampled a bloody path through their own ranks they with macedonians on three sides of them fled through the as yet uninvolved Indian infantry on the right porus with his army having dissolved into a panic-stricken mob fought on until Alexander persuaded him to surrender Not For the First Time Alexander accepted a defeated enemy as an ally he even added to pores' territory the Indian campaign continued but the Macedonian army was increasingly disenchanted with its King voices had been raised against Alexander pushing East even before he had conquered the Persian Heartland but in India these voices became tumultuous in the summer of 326 BC on the river hassis over 100 m east of the hpes the Army simply refused to go any farther the troops were demoralized by over two months of monsoon rain they are also worried by the rumors of the size of the forces opposed to them in India also the fact that they are now campaigning Beyond Persia they said that the Macedonian clothes were in rags they no longer looked the same as they had they had to wear Persian clothes um most of their comrades had died along the way those who hadn't died had often been settled in Alexander's new cities which he'd created um along his route and they didn't understand why Alexander wanted to keep going so long why he didn't want to go home again and that really um was what brought the conquest to an end more than anything else the soldiers wanted to reap some of the benefits of this Conquest that they'd achieved and they wanted to go home to see their families again and to feel there was going to be an end to to their Warfare somewhere along the way and Alexander had to give into that angry and very disappointed Alexander gave up his dream of advancing to the encircling ocean at the edge of the Known World this did not however mean the end of the India campaign as Alexander insisted on Conquering the indis valley through to the Sea over 400 mil through the Lush fertile and extremely hot River Plains then a second blow fell in Fierce fighting at the great Fortress of Molton Alexander was critically wounded by an arrow that pierced his lung he was not expected to live but his phenomenal powers of recovery prevailed as they had done on nine previous occasions when he suffered life-threatening wounds including broken limbs skull fractures and a catapult bolt through his shoulder weaken by injury and with a homesick Army Alexander finally turned for Babylon and home he decided to take his army along the Arabian Sea through the gdan desert Alexander when he set out across the gedrosian desert in what's now Southern Iran he wouldn't have known of course that the conditions were going to be as hostile as they turned out to be and it's also very probably the case that our ancient writings have exaggerated the death and destruction which ensued because this was a marvelous way of yet again presenting Alexander as increasingly arbitrary and despotic because what our ancient writings say is that Alexander's sole motivation in crossing the gedrosian desert with his army was to try to succeed where Cyrus the founder of the Persian Empire had failed he'd lost an army trying to follow that very same route so this was a way for ancient writers who were presenting Alexander in a hostile light to show well he's at it again his ego has got the better of him in fact there is enough evidence to show that logistically The Crossing was as prepared for as it could be there certainly was loss of life it was probably um heaviest in the baggage train the camp followers these would have been the people whom Alexander would have been least worried about feeding and it would have been least heavy probably among the crack troops we don't seem to have ancient evidence for the Macedonian Rank and file having suffered heavy losses so probably an exaggerated story but there may also be an element of Truth in once more this idea of rivalry that Alexander is trying to outdo a predecessor even conservative estimates of the losses on that desert March put the casualties in tens of thousands back in Babylon Alexander built a large Fleet which he planned to use to settle the Persian Gulf and open up a permanent trade route to Egypt but it was not to be he contracted a fever possibly malaria and on the 10th of June 323 BC after a night of heavy drinking Alexander died he was a month short of his 33rd birthday at its height his Empire covered most of the Known World his military prowess was unquestionable his ability to inspire and Lead men awesome his energy prodigious so what is his enduring Legacy and what questions remain unanswered did he merely take the best Army in the ancient world built up by his father Philip and run it into the ground I think there's no doubt that Alexander did owe a lot of success to the reforms which Philip had made but equally we can see through our sources that Alexander was himself both a very successful commander and probably more importantly a very inspirational commander in that he made did his men really want to follow him and want to excel I think that's probably as important as the quality of the army that he had did he really believe he was a God we can't be absolutely certain what was in Alexander's mind for instance we're told that when he was wounded he pointed to the blood flowing from his wound and said look it's ordinary human blood it's not the blood of a God is it so there's a tradition from Antiquity that he did not take seriously this Aura of godliness that was coming to surround him and of course part of that aura undoubtedly if it did exist was being projected by courtiers by flatterers what we do know is that there were Greek cities which were discussing offering him Divine cult at the end of his Reign now the question we don't really know is to what extent they were acting under pressure or to what extent they were acting under their own valtion and in ancient Society the connection between enormous power wielded by an individual and Divinity was actually quite close in some ways so it could well have been that there were Greeks who thought that Alexander's enormous power heralded his divinity did he build an Empire that endured it's very easy to look at Alexander's conquests and see him as a sort of Fly by Night military Megalania however a closer look at at the way Alexander conducted himself on campaign makes it clear that he was laying down fairly long-term foundations he was building cities he was establishing civil Administration he was creating a fused political culture that could last um and he is very much more than just the brilliant General Alexander's rign marked the end of the classical era and the dawn of the helenistic age that flourished for three centuries Greek civilization and culture its language and architecture its administrative structures Arts temples libraries theaters and gymnasia spread across a region that reached to the foothills of the Himalayas isolated regions that before Alexander's time had relied on Exchange and barter became part of a huge single Market in which goods were bought with coins bearing his likeness many survived to this day the new roots of communication that were opened up became the conduits through which Not Just Goods but peoples craft religions stories armies languages arts and a vast body of knowledge and creativity spread across the known world and with them went accounts of Alexander and his achievements he was truly a legend in his own Lifetime and after his death that Legend became an inspiration to many who dreamed But ultimately failed to follow where he had led [Music]
